


Unfinished or Previously Deleted Marble Hornets Works

by empire_eels



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Body Swap AU, Kinda nasty description of drowning, M/M, Nymphs & Dryads, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, jam is very mild they just hug sometimes, major character death is just the canon deaths, theres like two seconds of Brian content sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29918691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empire_eels/pseuds/empire_eels
Summary: Some Marble Hornets stuff that I either removed from ao3 or never finished but I just want to put them somewhere that isn’t my Gmail drafts
Relationships: Jay Merrick/Timothy "Tim" Wright | Masky, Jessica Locke & Jay Merrick, Jessica Locke & Timothy "Tim" Wright | Masky
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> This one I posted and then deleted because a tumblr mutuals mentioned shitty ooc marble hornets fics on ao3 once and with absolutely 0 evidence I was like “this is about me” and deleted it 
> 
> Tw for. Well. Drowning

Jay Merrick is drowning. Coughing and sputtering, arms flailing underwater. His jaw starts to lock up as tears that can’t fall wait to fill his eyes. His lungs fill with dirty water with every foolish breath his panicked mind forces him to take, sealing his fate.

To drown as the unworthy, while everyone watches him from their ark. Safe and dry.

Everything goes quiet. The water’s violent waves crash over him with no sound, his arms fall numb, reaching towards the surface listlessly. He stops breathing as his ears fill with the sound of dull static. 

Blacks spots fill his vision as the world refuses to yield it’s secrets to him, silent and uncaring. He thrashes his arms, or at least tries but his body betrays as he sinks further into the darkness. He tries shouting but he can’t hear the words he’s forming in his mind so he swallows more water instead. The still lake takes him in, he struggles to shout a name and call for help as the water quietly erases him from existe-

“TIM! HE-“  
Jay’s body convulses on the dead leaves as he hacks and coughs the water, but take in something else instead. It burn his through and his eyes sting as tears stream from his eyes. His vision is clouded with dark spots and his whole body trembles and shakes as he tries to hold himself up in his hand and knees.

Somewhere along the line he faints but he doesn’t realise this until several minutes later when the world fades back in and he finds that he’s curled up on the ground holding fistfuls of orange leaves and dirt.

He pushes himself up but it takes a ridiculous amount of time, his legs giving out from under him several times. He can’t breath and his nose smells only smoke.

He’s in the woods. Beautiful trees painted orange and yellow with fire. Choking and wheezing as the wood smoke fills his already battered lungs, his vision starts to swim and darkens as his legs sway underneath him.

Once again it takes some time to realise he’s fainted, it’s almost like sleeping the way that he doesn’t think about anything. His mind finally catches up when he realises that the steady jilting of his body up and down is the sensation of being in a car and what he’s staring at is actually the back of a car seat.

He’s lying in the back seat of Tim’s car. The smell of cigarette smoke is almost unbearable after what he just experienced.

“What the fuck.” Jay’s whisper is rough and rasps something horrible like dry leaves being stepped on.

The car brakes sharply and Jay is jolted forward, bringing a sudden wave of nausea before the car stops. 

A familiar figure peeks around the drives seat to see his wretched form.

“Jay?” A familiar voice calls out to him.

Jay would have very much liked to confirm that he was, in fact, Jay Merrick - but all he could manage was a weak gurgle as he realised that the left side of his stomach felt as though someone had punched an iron nail into it as though it was the hand of Mr Christ himself.

He could vaguely feel blood dripping out of his mouth and nose but what he could really feel was the pain. 

He hears a car door open, close and then the door on his side open. 

Tim grabs his shoulder and sits him up, his grip tight as though he’s afraid Jay might disappear.

“Jay..... you’re alive?” Tim’s brow furrows with concern as he shakes Jay lightly to get his attention.

“Yeah. Why uh, wouldn’t I be?” Jay mutters weakly, completely ignoring that he’d almost drowned previously.

...

As far as roommates go, Jessica supposed that Tim was pretty good. He cleaned up after himself, didn’t make too much noise and best of all, understood how to help her with all the... recent events. However she still missed Amy’s straightforwardness, and her easygoing nature.

After telling her that Jay had moved away, Tim brooded for weeks, disappearing for long smoke breaks. He’d often stare into space during their brief conversations. Jessica thought that perhaps Tim cared about Jay more than he let on.

It was raining. The wind had picked up shaking the soaked trees like a child with a soft toy. The constant pitter patter of rain drops has always been comforting to Jessica, but it seemed to have set Tim on edge. The whole day, Tim nervously fidgeted and moved around the house without purpose.

Eventually, he broke down and told her the truth. That Alex had taken Jay away and that he didn’t know where he was. Somehow, she still felt that Tim wasn’t telling the whole truth, but he looked shaken and exhausted, his skin pale and his hands shaking. 

The next week, he was gone. He’d left a note on the kitchen counter saying that he’d gone for a drive. Jessica knew better then to try go after him.

...

“Jay, Alex shot you. I saw your body, on top of the pages. I thought you were dead.”

...  
Jay’s alone in the room he shut himself in. Alex doesn’t even come in to finish him off, or to say goodbye. Didn’t even say anything when he raised the gun and shot him. Fucking bastard. He’s alone with that thing, he can’t breathe he’s suffocating he’s alone alone alonealonealonealone-  
He’s in Tim’s kitchen, pages and pages of haunting words and messages. One them reads The Ark. The room is dark except of a dim circle of light around him. Tim? Tim’s in the room, coughing violently. Jay can’t move. His eyes are closed yet he can see everything, even behind him. Tim, please come closer please don’t leave me here alone, can’t die alone. Jay doesn’t know that he’s already dead, so much time has already passed.   
And then Tim’s gone, chasing after the hooded man.

Jay feels numb as the water rushes over him. Tim, Alex, even the hooded man. Brian, Jay thinks. They all left him alone to die, let that fucking thing take his body. 

It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.

He can’t breathe.

...

Someone shakes him awake, his eyes snap open. He’s in a bed, four walls around him. Tim’s leaning over him, again. 

“You just found him like that? Soaking wet?” Jessica’s voice hits Jay’s ears.

“Yeah, he was just standing on the side of the road like a hitchhiker. Looked more like a drowned rat then he usually does.”

Does Jay feel bad that they’re lying to Jessica? A little, but it’s better than expecting her to believe that he just appeared in the back off Tim’s car. 

“He’s okay apart from that though, right?” 

“Well you see that’s the thing. Alex, well... he hurt Jay pretty badly the last time I saw him, but there isn’t a scrape on him.”

Jay realises that Tim is right, he doesn’t have a bullet wound anymore. He’s right as rain, nothing stopping him from finding Alex and taking-

At this moment Jay’s train of thought was rudely interrupted by his body’s need to let out a loud sneeze, and then a weak, phlegm heavy cough.

“He’s ice cold, you turned the heat right up and and he’s still not warming up.” Jessica starts moves towards the door.

“He’s always been cold, his hands always felt icy back then.”

“Stay with him Tim, I’m going to the store to get some flu medicine since he’s clearly got something going on.” 

As Jessica leaves, Tim turns to Jay.

“Hang in there, I’ll get you some tissues.”

When Tim returns, he comes with something hot in a mug as well a box of tissues.

Jay excepts the mug gratefully, but with some difficulty. His hands keep shaking and his vision swims every time he moves his head.

The mug is filled within some kind of herbal tea, which Jay drinks as much as he can in one gulp without burning himself. He didn’t realise how cold he felt until his hands held the hot mug. When he’s finished Tim takes the mug and moves to leave but Jay grabs his wrist.

“What’s wrong Jay?” Tim places the mug on the bedside table.

“Stay.... with me...” Jay whispers, his voices still surprisingly hoarse. 

“Alright then, let me get a chair.” Jay tugs in Tim’s arm again as he goes to leave again. 

Tim rolls his eyes. “Jay you stubborn fuck, do you want me to just stand here or something?”

Jay gives Tim a stare, simultaneously giving him déjà vu as well. 

“Why do you always pull the same shit when you’re sick?” Tim sighs grumpily.

...

Tim feels fine, for once. It’s actually Jay who feels out of it after this Operator attack.

He seems almost delirious in manner, constantly muttering, as well as tossing and turning. He keeps getting up and staring into space. Jay seems to act feverish but his skin feels ice cold

The pills seem to be the secret. Tim could actually stand up to the thing with them running through his system, but he feels bad about giving Jay the pills without him knowing it, so he holds off for now.

It’s right before Tim is about to go to bed when Jay calls his name quietly. 

“Tim... can you come here please?”

Tim reluctantly gets up from his bed and stand besides Jay’s besides.

“Are you alright? Do you need something?”

Catching Tim by surprise, Jay pulls him onto the bed beside him.

Tim laughs softly, “What the hell, you could have have just asked if you wanted company you idiot.” He ruffles Jay’s hair, without knowing why.

“Thanks, I’m glad that I love you.” Jay mumbles, resting his head on Tim’s shoulder drowsily.

Tim resolves to give Jay pills the next day because that was fucking weird.

...

Grumbling under his breath, Tim layabout down on the best beside Jay, letting Jay wrap his cold and slightly clammy arms around him. 

“Feel better now asshole?” Tim asks as Jay leans into him.


	2. Bitter Poison for a Parasite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bitter Poison for a Parasite
> 
> A dryad!Jay (my fucked up interpretation of a dryad that is)/ Jay lives au.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same story as last chapter e.i. Posted then deleted out of insecurity. Was supposed to be multichapter but I lost interest after my second or third chapter attempt was was lost. Can remember if I posted a second/third chapter or any remnants of that because my gmail drafts only contain the first one. Yes I write fanfiction in my gmail drafts

You have four voicemails from Tim Wright. 

“Jay, I know this is stupid and that you’re dead and Alex is dead and Brian is dead an-and...

I just want you to know, if this is the way I can reach you, that I’m doing fine. That Jessica is doing fine. I’m out on the road, filming the last entry. My last entry. I told Jessica I was moving up to where you moved. I’m not always a liar.”

...

“I lied again. It was the last entry but it wasn’t my last entry. I’m sorry to leave another voicemail, especially if this number belongs to someone else. But I have to tell you these things, Jay. Not anyone else. Not even Brian. I’m moving out of Alabama, but not up to where you are. I still have your camera, I hope you don’t mind.”

...

“Please don’t leave me like Brian did.”

...

“You know Jay, most people drunk text their exes but I apparently drunk voicemailed a dead man. I visited Jessica today, and I guess we thought the gaps in our memories could be alleviated by alcohol. I’m sorry.”

...

“I’m going to stop doing this Jay, this is my last goodbye to you so I can stop disturbing your rest. I’ll make it a proper one and I’ll get on with my life. Did you know there’s one pine tree in my garden. I planted the sapling thinking of you, they used to be your favourite.

You told me back during Marble Hornets filming, one of those times when Alex and Brian got tired of being our designated extroverts and left us alone to be introverts so that they could go do Alex and Brian things. 

You told me that the pines in Rosswood reminded you of home, and that sometimes they felt like home. I said that sounded stupid. I might of said that because the pines in Rosswood made me feel afraid.

Maybe a pine tree is in poor taste but I buried your camera underneath it. 

You used to cling to Alex like you were protecting him from something. Well, wherever you are, can you protect me while you’re at it.”

...

*  
Jay didn’t wake up in Rosswood Park, he woke up in the burnt out shell of Tim’s kitchen and fainted from shock; promptly waking up in the aforementioned bastard park. He then got lost, called Tim, and collapsed again.

He would have preferred Tim’s kitchen.

*  
You have one missed call and one voicemail from Jay Merrick but you delete them both.

Your name is Tim Wright, you’ve been through hell and back, and you’ve just received a voicemail from someone who’s supposed to be dead.

To make matters worse, it’s 2 am and you’ve had your ringtone on full volume ever since you picked up his camera next to the blood stain in the abandoned school. Even when you watched him get shot on video, even when the apparition of his corpse haunted your kitchen shortly before your house was burnt down.

You hoped for something, you’ve received it far too late and it’s woken you up at 2 am, ruining a delicately repaired sleep cycle.

You just want to go to sleep and deal with it in the morning, when it will likely disappear due to it being a figment of your 2 am imagination. 

You’re crying now.

Your phone is ringing. Every time you sob it feels like you sob with your whole body, they rack through your body replacing reason with stupid, human feelings.

You have one missed call from Jay Merrick. 

*

“Tim, if... if you do come, please bring a wood saw. I’m not walking out of here like... like this.”

Jay ends the newest voicemail, suitably vague because he’s not telling Tim this over the phone.

He has five voicemails from Tim, but he can’t bring himself to listen. He feels sick and dizzy, there’s faint static on his vision like visual snow. 

And the trees are whispering to him. Jay reckons that trees aren’t something you want in your bad side.

Before he’d lost Alex the trees whispered the latest tree gossip, which yew had gone out with which hazel and all that. When Alex slipped through his fingers the trees whispered of failure, losing track of his Cause.

Now they whispered bitter poison, because Alex was dead, because he cut down his original wood which would have saved him from death sooner.

Because original wood was the only thing keeping him alive and and yet he refused to sleep a deep slumber that only a tree can.

Jay would have returned to dirt and leaf mold, but there were two problems.

1) He didn’t want to. Once he slept he wouldn’t return for years, perhaps more. It would be like losing seven months of his life again.

2) He physically couldn’t. This wasn’t his home anymore, and he didn’t know why.

The trees whispered poison and parasites. The trees whispered traitor.

Jay had four voicemails to listen to and nothing much else to do except listen to his elderly relatives and family friends. But they weren’t his relatives anymore, and no tree in Rosswood was still his friend.

*  
Tim Wright decided that he was just going to wake up at 3am and deal with the consequences, because lying awake staring at the ceiling was losing its appeal.

The game plan was that he was going to shower, drink an ungodly amount of coffee, use some of his work vacation days, buy a saw and call Jessica.

He followed the game plan but not necessarily in the correct order. 

He did call Jessica, but it felt more like Jessica had called him and gave him a piece of her mind about following directions of mysterious voicemails.

She also wheedled a promise to bring Jay to her first. 

For what, Tim couldn’t guess.

Tim entered the small grassy space that was his garden and looked at the pine tree that was pretty much the only feature. Most trees made him feel queasy and their branches reached out to him in a most disconcerting way. But this tree reminded him irresistibly of Jay, even without the context of it being for him.

Maybe it was the way the branches drooped forlornly like Jay’s shoulders. giving the impression of someone who has never made an impression on the world in his life. Maybe the it was pine needles weird arrangements, lying orderly in some places and sticking up in others, like Jay’s hair when he removed his hat. Maybe it was because the tree made him feel incredibly, incredibly guilty for reasons he could never put into the words. 

Or perhaps Tim knew too many weird details about Jay and should stop projecting them onto this fucking tree.


	3. Switcheroo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Body swap au ft shitty dialogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJORLY unfinished lol. Just lost interest

Jay woke up one morning on the other side of the hotel room. Specifically, in the bed that Tim chose. Before he had time to unpack the situation, he heard a yawn from the other side of the room - his bed.

“What the fuck.” Tim groaned in an exasperated manner. Jay had heard this sound coupled with those words often, usually in reaction to something Jay himself had done. However this time Tim’s voice sounded different, yet familiar.

“Tim?” Jay asked tentatively, his voice feeling strange. He up from the bed and made for the bathroom. “Why did we swap beds?”

“The hell if I know.” replied Tim followed by a un-Tim like scream. In fact it was a very Jay-ish scream. 

Because Jay himself was sitting in his own bed, which was impossible because he was standing up and making his way to the bathroom, with admittedly more speed now

The bathroom mirror revealed that he seemed to have woken up with Tim’s reflection. Presently his own reflection joined him in the mirror as Tim decided to join the bathroom mirror party.

“Any idea why we’ve switched bodies?” It was very jarring to watch himself talk with Tim’s manners of speech.

“No clue.”  
Jay replied absentmindedly.  
He poked himself in the face in a determined manner.

“Personally I think we’re re-enacting Freaky Friday, which is probably one of the more annoying things you’ve put me through. There are lots to choose from though.” Tim frowned.

Jay felt rather hurt by that statement but also felt that it was deserved. “Sorry?” 

“Don’t be, Freaky Friday was a cinematic masterpiece.”

“So... what do we do?”

“Personally I don’t even feel like leaving the room like this, your joints are stiff as fuck. You’d probably work best trying to figure out how to fix this.” 

“Sure, I guess can do that.” Jay opened his laptop that was lying on the dresser. “What about you?”

“I’m going to have an existential crisis in the parking lot after I get dressed, text me if you need me.”


	4. This is Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jay and Brian live/Jay has wings au where they move into Tim’s childhood home and survive and shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfinished again lol  
> Jay’s wings aren’t even mentioned just vagued at cause i wanted to build up to it at the end of the chapter. But I never finished the chapter so

From the get go, Tim had his misgivings about the house, he usually had misgivings about anything his mother left him. There was only one bedroom, just like he remembered, and Brian had swiftly claimed the loft bed. He crawled up the ladder and crouched there like some kind of goblin, giving them an inquisitive look under his hood. At least they’d been able to convince him to ditch the frowning ski mask. 

Looking up at Brian, Tim resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be able to sleep alone, they only had a mattress and a sleeping bag between the three of them, and Tim was neither about to share a sleeping bag with Jay nor attempt to drag a mattress up to the loft bed.

“Why don’t I just sleep in your car?” Jay suggests. They sold Jay’s car and the cameras before they moved in, only keeping Tim’s car and a handful of the more cheerful set tapes. 

“Someone might see your-“

Jay interrupts impatiently. “Tim, we live in the middle of nowhere now. I don’t think there’ll be anyone within a five mile radius that’s gonna see me.”

“But what if they do?” Tim doesn’t know why he’s reaching for a reason that Jay can’t sleep outside. Something about him being alone outside while he and Brian slept relatively safely in the house made him feel uneasy. “Besides, it was a long drive to get here, are you sure you wanna spend more time in the car.”

The prospect of lifelong back problems seemed to convince Jay. He sighs, then looks up at Brian. He tosses the still wrapped sleeping bag up to Brian, who catches it and scurries back to the corner of the loft with it. 

The loft bed isn’t the only strange architecture choice in Tim’s childhood home. The place was stubbed toe city, which he remembered the hard way when moving in the few larger pieces of furniture they had.


End file.
